She went

To her own place

Wherever that was,

A place of hugs and smiles

And coal fires smoking.

She went eagerly,

Waving a hand that said

I will soon forget you

And as she turned the corner

She dropped us from her mind

But her slender dark,

Her fluid walk

Solidified

To imprint the image of a moment

On the wall of time.


1st July 1916, 1

A summer morning; the air is glass.
A mild pink sunrise edges
clouds of beaten silver;
Melting, they cast no shadow.

Far behind, a purple wall of trees
Guards fields striped black and gold.

There, where grass is white with dew;
Soft feet leave green imprints.

Here, a quagmire traps and taints the sky.
Our boots make craters.

The heat thickens.
A darkening band arches from the horizon,
A sleeve of steel.

Sound hangs frozen.

Back there, where crystal bubbles between stony banks,
Sandpipers call.

Ahead the ranks of poppies
Wait a fiercer whistle.

Seven twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.


1st July 1916, 2

Seven twenty-eight;
Breath gripped,
We crept into the storm.

And now the sun has fallen,
Crimson soaks the land.
Bats beat against a sky shocked pale.

Death crawls the mud in search of bleeding boys;
And still the noise, the murdering noise.


Rose

She was rambling from Victoria to Kings Cross,
Which was enough walking at her age,
What with all the searching along the way
And the ladder to carry.

But halfway down Park Lane
She met him. She knew him at once.
He was younger than when she had last seen him
But nobody fooled Rose.

Now tell me where you hid it.

He pointed a stained finger at the Marble Arch,
Smiled and leapt onto a moving bus.
From the top deck he whispered.

What holds at Tyburn?
Echoed from the chestnut trees

She bent her ladder against the sky
And climbed to her release.